


Requiem and Reclaimer

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angel (Borderlands) Lives, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Eridian Lore, F/F, Gen, Nyx is here, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Team as Family, Vault of the Traveler, character focused, liberal halo 4 references, populating the f/f tag my damn self, so is crake, what happened in the vault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2019-10-20 20:01:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 18,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17628746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: It's been two years since the fall of Helios. One year since the Vault of the Traveler opened with a beacon of light and closed again, taking Rhys and Fiona with it. One year, and Vaughn hasn't stopped looking. One year, and Sasha can't keep looking.The only clue they have is a single data drive containing Hyperion research on the Vault of the Traveler. The problem? The only two people who can unlock its contents have been dead for years.When Sasha picks up an injured and bleeding woman on the side of a dusty road, she doesn't think it'll turn into anything more than an irksome act of kindness.Needless to say, things aren't that simple.





	1. Prologue to Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> man, I've been beating this one into shape for For. Ever.  
> I most likely will be editing this one a lot, just because it's an idea I really like and I want to do it right!
> 
> also i have an angel playlist for this fic on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/cerissweeshnaw/playlist/1qrBPd9NmDQbPsMt2MOOq7?si=lsHYZydCRUmDtdUSckB80Q
> 
> don't forget to kudo comment and obey!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys gets buried alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made a playlist for the main ship of this work  
> https://open.spotify.com/user/cerissweeshnaw/playlist/7u2LlR0tyzlAnjXwdS58Eo?si=XG9GCAREQqqb-FU5PdnnTA

Rhys had nightmares about being buried alive.

It was a ridiculous fear—ground burials were a barbaric thing of the past—but it still occupied his subconscious and crept into his nightmares. He spent so many nights encased in a box, struggling, gasping for breath, banging his fists (always both flesh) against the wood while the world carried on above him, uncaring and unhearing.

And now he couldn’t wake up.

His coffin was undeniably real. Cold, hard stone scented with sweat and dust and fear. The air was already running out, he imagined. There was no light, only an oppressive darkness that held the possibility of fungus and the vermin of decay. He lay on the coffin’s soft padding and trembled. There was no space to move.

He’d been buried alive.

He tried to scream, but all that came out was a squeak that no one could possibly hear, let alone through six feet of soil. He was alone, and he was going to die, and everyone had already forgotten him.

The padding beneath him shifted, and Rhys’s heart jumped into his throat as his brain conjured images of sharp-toothed threshers and writhing worms here to devour him piece by piece. He clamped his mouth shut. He couldn’t reach his nose, they’d get into his nose, oh God—

“Help,” he squealed through clenched teeth, breathless and afraid.

“You’re on top of me, Rhys, you ass!” the padding said in a familiar voice. “Get off!”

As if this couldn’t get any worse.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rhys snapped hysterically, “is our manner of being BURIED ALIVE not convenient enough for you?”

“What, afraid of tight spaces? You lived on a goddamn space station!” Fiona struggled to get out from underneath him, which succeeded only in pressing him uncomfortably against one of the sides of the stone casket. “Push off the lid!”

“I can’t,” Rhys grunted. Both his arms were pressed against his chest. “Besides, I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s a stone ca—“

A limb that Rhys could only assume was an arm brushed past his cheek in the darkness and pushed the lid off with seemingly no effort.

“Or maybe it is.” 

Rhys squinted against the sudden influx of blue and purple light. It was dim, but after that crushing darkness it seemed blinding.

“Get—off—me!” Fiona growled, punctuating each word with a shove.

“I’m not trying to stay in this coffin,” Rhys retorted. 

He tried to haul himself out of the stone box, but it was hard to get leverage against a squirming Fiona. Fiona provided the necessary leverage by shoving him extremely hard. With a yelp, Rhys tumbled out of their joint tomb in an extremely undignified manner. 

“You know,” Fiona remarked from inside what Rhys could now see was the treasure box from the Vault, “this is actually kinda comfy without seven feet of corporate leg in it.” She rested her boots on the side of the box, and Rhys knew for a damn fact she had her arms folded leisurely behind her head. 

Rhys pushed himself to his feet and directed his attention first to brushing off his slacks—funnily enough, they were still pristine—and second to his surroundings.

His newly recovered breath left him again.

“Uh, Fiona?” Rhys squeaked. “You might want to take a look at this.”

His hands trembled and his chest filled with ice, even as his heart thrummed in wonder.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.”


	2. Ships Passing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha performs a random act of kindness.

There was a figure walking by the side of the road.

At first they were just a dark shape. But as the caravan approached, the finger came into focus as a stumbling woman in a red jacket, a short sword strapped to her back. Her black hair was long and unkempt, and her steps were faltering and uneasy. Her arm was pressed against her stomach.

Sasha rumbled by. The young woman didn’t even look at her. Her wide, feverish eyes were fixated on the ground in front of her, watching her halting steps. As Sasha passed, she could see that the woman’s stomach and arm held against it were covered in blood. 

This sort of thing wasn’t uncommon. She faded in the rearview mirror. As Sasha watched her become smaller and smaller, the stranger’s knees buckled without warming and she collapsed into the dust with a small puff of dirt. 

Sasha kept driving. After about a minute, she sighed.

“God dammit,” she muttered, turning the caravan around.

The girl was still lying on the ground, which was a point in favor of “not a highway robber.” Sasha pulled the caravan over and waited. Neither of them moved for a solid minute.

“Fine,” Sasha mumbled. 

She put her keys in an inside pocket and warily gripped a knife as she exited the caravan.

“Hey,” she called to the figure, “are you okay?”

The woman made a vague noise and attempted to stand. The tension in Sasha’s shoulders relaxed a little. This person was clearly physically incapable of hurting anyone. Sasha placed an awkward hand on her shoulder and it came away slick with blood. Blood was soaking into the dust. 

“C’mon, you have to work with me. Stand up. I have a medkit in the van.”

The young woman looked up, bewildered, at Sasha, who for the first time got a good look at her face. Odd veins of faded purple ran up the right side of her neck, which was banded with a thick lavender scar. Her face was bloody and bruised, yet delicate. Her eyes were so blue it was unsettling. Despite everything, there was a determined set to her jaw.

“What’s the catch?” she asked, her voice low, ragged, husky, yet immediately commanding. Her words were followed by a wrenching cough. 

As it happened, from the moment she turned around Sasha had been coming up with multiple “catches.” Money. Guns. Helping Vaughn with the turbines. Make an offer. Whatever she had. Fix the suspension.

The woman had seen a lot of catches, judging from the weary, transactional way she looked at Sasha. Sasha had never seen anyone quite like her, in appearance nor demeanor.

“No catch,” Sasha told her. “Just don’t want to leave you on the road to die. The rakk are bad enough to begin with.” 

Sasha hoisted the woman into a standing position.

“Just a few more steps,” she encouraged. 

She managed to maneuver the woman onto the couch. She squeaked in pain with every movement. Her blood soaked into the cushions, barely changing the color. 

“Hang on,” Sasha told her. 

Her rummage through the cabinets yielded a small box containing a few health vials and a basic first aid kit. 

“I’m gonna need to cut your shirt off to see your wound,” Sasha said.

With surprising speed and vigor, one of the woman’s hands shot up to block Sasha’s wrist. Her eyes were piercing, beautiful, hypnotic, and they bored into Sasha like twin drills. For a moment, Sasha forgot to pull her hand away. 

“I’m trusting you,” the woman rasped, “so trust me that if you bring harm to me, you’ll regret it.”

Sasha remembered to pull her hand away.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be making threats.”

Her stare was unnerving. Sasha tried to match it, but was unsuccessful.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. The young woman still looked skeptical. Sasha held out a pinkie.

“Pinkie promise.”

The woman accepted the pinkie promise. As soon as she’d done so, her hand dropped and her eyes fluttered closed. Sasha unzipped her jacket and started to cut away the fabric of her shirt. As she did so, she saw what the woman had wanted to hide. 

Tattoos. Or, more accurately, markings. Beautiful swirling lines of white with just a tint of blue.

She was a Siren. 

Sasha really didn’t give a shit about this, other than her exasperation at yet another Eridian thing meddling in her life. She began to care for the wound—a deep slash from a serrated knife, by the looks of it—keeping up a running commentary as she did so about how this was bullshit and why was she even helping this person. 

She could make herself useful at Helios when she healed. Someone needed to inventory the parts shoved into every spare space in the van, or Yvette was gonna lose it. Maybe Vaughn would recompense her for the medkit.


	3. Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where is she?

Angel woke up to motion. 

It was the steady motion of a vehicle, with dust and rocks beneath its tires and a wanderer at its wheel.

Her stomach hurt, but not too badly. It burned with the signature feeling of an Anshin vial. She couldn’t recall the details of her miles of walking, but she remembered a fiery pain drowning out everything else except the ache of her feet and the woman who smelled like cinnamon and motor oil.

She didn’t know where she was being taken. She tried to sit up, but it hurt too much. Her mouth and throat were dry and sore. Nothing was missing from her SDU, but her jacket and shirt were both gone, leaving her tattoos on display.

She vaguely remembered a pinkie promise to keep her safe. Not that that meant anything next to the millions—billions—she was worth. She digitized a small pistol—her sword, too, was no longer on her back, not that she was very good with it—in case she had to defend herself. Not that she stood much of a chance, weapons or no.

Angel gave sitting up another attempt. This one was more of a success, and she could examine her surroundings.

She was in the middle of a van. There was a bed in one corner and a small kitchen against one side. Spare parts and scrounged scraps covered all the available counter space.

Angel’s stomach growled. She was thirsty, too. She remembered the last time she’d eaten but couldn’t remember how long ago it had been. She couldn’t even remember how long she’d walked. After the explosion and the bandits and the crash…

Angel turned around so she was leaning on the back of the couch. She couldn’t see the woman’s face, just her long dreadlocks and the long road ahead. Angel vaguely remembered her face. Her eyes were chips of seafoam. She was pretty. Angel didn’t remember much else. 

It took a few attempts to speak, but Angel finally managed.

“Where are we going?”

The woman at the wheel gasped and the car jerked for a second.

“You startled me,” she complained. “I didn’t think you’d be awake yet.” She straightened out the vehicle. “I’m heading back to Helios to drop off these parts.”

“Helios?” Angel’s voice quavered traitorously. It was one thing to dream of going back there to dig up Hyperion’s lost secrets. It was another to learn, suddenly, that she was being taken back there.

“Yeah,” the woman yawned. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No,” Angel lied quietly.

She tapped twice on the side of her head and silently ordered Hesperus to check GPS and her vitals.

“Approximate trajectory: Helios crash site in 5.4 Earth days. Vitals stable. Rest recommended. Full injury report—“

Angel cut Hesperus off. Hearing about her exact injuries made her queasy.

“Who are you?” the woman asked. “What’re you doing walking wounded along the side of the road?”

“Pandora’s dangerous,” Angel said, “especially for…people like me.”

“I was kinda hoping for your name.”

“Oh. It’s Angel.”

“Sasha. Nice to meet you. Kinda wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

The rumbling of the wheels echoed through the following awkward silence.

“You were, like, dying,” Sasha finally blurted. “How long were you walking? What happened to you?”

“Bandit trouble.”

“You really don’t like giving straight answers,” Sasha huffed. 

“I have to be careful.”

Sasha sighed. It sounded more apathetic than frustrated. 

“We’ll be at Helios in a week or so. Vaughn always has odd jobs, if you want to find work.”

Angel twisted her fingers together. A nervous habit she didn’t see the point in trying to shake.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.

“What?”

“You could get billions for a Siren from any corporation. Why save me and let me go my own way? Or are you going to sell me back to Hyperion as soon as we reach Helios?”

“I don’t want billions,” Sasha said harshly. “Large sums of cash cause nothing but trouble.” She took a breath, apparently mulling over her words. “I’ll be honest, it occurred to me.” She glanced over her shoulder at Angel. “But I pinkie promised.”

Oddly enough, Angel believed her.

“Of course, I’d like my medkit back,” Sasha concluded.

“I’ll get you one at the next town,” Angel told her. Her fingers tapped her way up her other wrist. “What else?”

“Hm?”

“I’m assuming there’s a price for driving me hundreds of miles.”

Sasha shrugged. “Depends what you can offer.”

“I’m sort of good with computers.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. It seemed to be the right thing to say, because Sasha perked up.

“If I wanted, say, hypothetically, to erase any record of myself and someone’s else’s existence, would you be able to do that? Bounties? Criminal records?”

“Depends.” It really didn’t. “Who’s got the records?”

“Just Hollow Point city government, as far as I know.”

“I lost my computer,” Angel told her, “but once I get back on the ECHOnet, it’ll have no trace of you like that.” She snapped her fingers. 

Her confidence seemed to disgruntle Sasha. 

“We’ll see,” she growled.

Angel curled her fingers tightly, wondering what she’d said wrong.

“Sorry,” Sasha muttered. “I don’t trust hackers.”

“I don’t trust scavengers,” Angel replied evenly. 

“Hey,” Sasha snapped, “I saved your goddamn life!” 

“I can’t blame you for not trusting hackers. Can you blame me for not trusting anyone?”

Sasha huffed. 

“I…guess not.”

Angel hated saying the wrong thing. She needed Sasha on her side. So she opted to say nothing more, instead glancing around the caravan.

Next to her was a round table strewn with various medical supplies. Her jacket lay crumpled on the opposite side from her. Her shirt was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s my shirt?” she asked. 

“Threw it out,” Sasha told her with defensive nonchalance. “I had to peel it off of you after cutting it into four pieces. There was a lot of blood.”

Angel felt no emotion at this. She was glad the shirt was gone, if only because it was so hot. Maybe she was feverish. Or maybe Pandora was just like that. Probably a bit of both. She didn’t even like that shirt.

It was ridiculous that she’d held onto it that long, anyway. 

“We’re stopping in a few minutes to get gas,” Sasha concluded, “so keep busy until then.”

Without even looking, she threw a book from the dashboard over her shoulder. It landed perfectly on the table. Angel got the sense Sasha knew exactly where everything in the caravan was. Like it was an extension of her. 

The gas station was in the no-horse town of Splitshot Camp, which was basically just a gas station, general store, and saloon. 

“Stay here,” Sasha told Angel. “I trust you marginally more than the locals not to touch my shit.”

“You got it,” Angel replied. 

As soon as Sasha left, Angel hauled herself to her feet. It was slow going, but the health vial and a few hours of rest had worked wonders. The sharp pain in her stomach had been replaced with a sick, dull ache.

Sasha lived out of the caravan most of the time, that much was apparent, and yet it was remarkably impersonal. Aside from a small rack of jewelry bolted to a kitchen cabinet and a tabloid poking out from under the bed, there was no indication that a person with interests and hobbies lived here. On one wall was a slightly lighter rectangle where a poster once hung.

Angel wasn’t sure what she expected from her search. There was no business card for Sasha Lastname: Siren Hunter or a contract stamped with a yellow H. Just the trappings of someone trying to make as honest a living as was possible on Pandora.

There was a picture by the bed, taped so the actual image was facing the wall. It was in a corner, almost hidden behind the bed, as if forgotten. Angel took a peek. 

It was Sasha as a little girl. With her family. A smiling girl with a remarkably similar face and a red streak in her hair had an arm around Sasha. Behind them stood a smiling man. The photo was emblazoned with the caption “First big heist!!” She was an urchin on Pandora, yet she looked so happy. She had a family.

Sasha obviously lived alone in the caravan. 

“I told you not to touch my shit!”

Angel nearly jumped out of her skin as she turned around. Sasha snatched the photo away, murder in her eyes.

“Don’t look at my stuff!” she yelled.

I messed up, Angel thought. But she didn’t know how. Still, that one thought played on repeat, uncomprehendingly. She was supposed to look at things. Supposed to investigate. Damned if she didn’t, and now, damned if she did. She couldn’t look Sasha in the eyes. Her breath came too fast. Maybe if she stayed quiet, Sasha would just kick her out of the caravan, wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t throw her to the rakks, wouldn’t sell her to Hyperion, wouldn’t…

“Hey,” Sasha said.

Angel gasped and flinched away from her. Her tattoos flashed in time with her spastic, painfully throbbing heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” Angel blurted.

Explaining would make Sasha even angrier.

Sasha sighed, her anger seemingly forgotten.

“Hey, it’s fine. It’s just a stupid picture. Just…don’t do it again. Okay?”

Angel nodded mutely. Sasha taped the photo back up and returned to the driver’s seat. 

“I’m glad to see you’re up and about,” she called over her shoulder as she started the car. She sounded actually sincere. 

All the anger and tension had drained from her voice, so her voice now contained only the normal amount of clipped frustration. Which was still a substantial amount, but it didn’t seem directed at Angel, who stared at Sasha, baffled. Perhaps she was saving punishment for a later date.

_If she wasn’t going to sell me to Hyperion before, surely she will now._

Angel had to be on her guard.


	4. Glowing in Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel's fears prove unfounded

Ten minutes after Sasha had pulled the caravan over so they could sleep, and Angel was determined to stay awake. She lay on the couch with her eyes slitted open, waiting for the attack. She thanked the unseasonably chilly air for keeping her shivering and awake.

She thought about Helios. Helios, the eye in the sky. Helios, the watcher. Helios, the jailer.

Angel remembered when the behemoth had come crashing down. She was holed up at the time in an old DAHL research station, watching the stars, when suddenly the metal titan began to splinter and crack. She thought it was her imagination at first. 

It hadn’t been.

The chunks hit the ground with doleful finality, each one the toll of a bell for the end of an era. There was blood and smoke and mangled metal gleaming the color of hatred in the unforgiving moonlight. She was hundreds of miles away, and yet still saw man-made meteors crash to the earth nearby. 

She investigated, of course. Her past was on that station, in backup servers for a satellite she could never get her hands on, in black boxes and the notes of a madman. She journeyed to the edge of the crash site and asked the first survivor she found—a woman with crazed eyes, wielding a pencil like a dagger—what had happened.

The woman told her of the blue ghost that had seemingly appeared to drag Helios to hell, and gave her a name of his sworn enemy. Rhys. 

Angel didn’t want any more hauntings—her ghosts already ate her alive every day—so she resolved she’d investigate at a later date. Not running away. Not giving up. Not turning away in fear from her past.

So she just turned her back and walked back the way she came over charred and dusty ground, trying to forget what she’d learned. And then it was on to new places, a new job. Trying to find steady work as a normal citizen. Living a fantasy she could never realize, so that one day she could find out what had happened. She was going to do that. Of course she was going to go back and do that. 

Apparently, she was going to face the metaphorical ghosts down whether she wanted to or not. If she lived to reach Helios. Or perhaps she would be sold back there, and nothing would have really changed. A sacrifice in vain, so much hurt at her hands, and for what? 

As Angel faked slow and sleepy breathing, she saw Sasha stand up in the dim light and approach Angel with something large and dark. A pillow to smother her. A rope to restrain her. A bag for her body.

“Don’t touch me!” Angel cried, bolting upright and outstretching her hand. A bubble of energy surrounded her, almost throwing Sasha off her feet and illuminating the inside of the vehicle in brilliant blue-white light. Her heart pumped erratically, and she could hear nothing over it.

In that light, Angel saw what Sasha was holding. A soft blanket.

“Whoah! Hey, relax,” Sasha told her. It sounded as if she was trying to be gentle and abrasive at the same time, and so her voice settled on awkward normalcy. She held up the blanket. “I thought you might be cold.”

Angel slowly, cautiously, lowered her arm a little.

“Sorry I scared you,” Sasha continued, “but that was super cool. What else can you do?”

It was the question of an acolyte, not a scientist. Her voice was curious, but directed at Angel. Not at the core of knowledge she held, but Angel herself.

Angel blinked. She had absolutely no frame of reference for this conversation or how to respond. 

“Um,” she said, “it varies. It’s…unpredictable.”

Angel dropped the barrier and let her arm drop to her side. Sasha approached, and Angel flinched a little, but she only tucked the very soft blanket around Angel’s shoulders. With that gesture, Angel realized how cold she’d been.

It was a very soft blanket. Sasha sat down beside her and gestured to her tattoos. 

“Can I…take a closer look?”

A question devoid of any imperatives. Angel outstretched her arm. Sasha took her hand, closely examining the twisting markings with a delicate touch. Her hands were rough and scarred, with callouses on the fingers that Angel had only ever seen on mechanics, yet touched Angel’s skin with all the softness of a butterfly’s wing. 

“Cool,” she breathed. “They’re beautiful.” She glanced up at Angel’s face with an entrancing half-smile totally devoid of any malicious intent.

_What the hell was happening?_

People had called Angel’s powers and markings many things. “Beautiful” had never been one of them. Angel’s powers had been appealing, alluring, mesmerizing. Nobody had ever bothered to look at the girl brandishing them.

“Thanks,” Angel replied, “I grew them myself.”

Sasha giggled. It wasn’t a particularly funny joke.

“Well, I’m going back to bed,” she said, standing up with a last lingering touch to Angel’s knuckles. She flashed Angel a smile that was incomplete but still dazzling before returning to bed.

Four more days on the road. Angel wasn’t sure if that was too long or not long enough.

With the lightest touch possible, her fingers traced the markings on her arm where Sasha had laid her rough hands. Had touched her. Touched her freely, not as a reward or punishment or promise of recompense, not as a bribe or a tool. There was only her mechanic’s hands and Angel’s arm still bearing flakes of blood. Glowing spirals and a fragile smile.

It was nice, Angel decided, to be touched. 

She curled the blanket around her shoulders and lay down, but didn’t go to sleep. She was no longer afraid. It was simply as though electricity raced from her arm to her brain like a pinball. For a moment, she thought she was accidentally using her powers. But no—it was only a memory of something so rarely experienced that it burned into her mind. 

It took a while to go to sleep, but she did so more peacefully than ever.


	5. The Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha takes Angel somewhere special

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requiem and Reclaimer 1.1 Update Notes:  
> -Misc. syntax and conventions debugging  
> -Removed cybernetic arm from Angel character model for better compatibility with future customization engine  
> -New weapons added so "knife" is no longer default gear option  
> -Sasha dialogue now contains less exposition

They started the day with breakfast.

Sasha made them two egg sandwiches. The egg wasn’t a type Angel recognized. Granted, she was no chef, but she was fairly sure eggs weren’t supposed to have green spots.

Visual weirdness notwithstanding, the sandwiches were delicious, and Angel told Sasha so.

“It’s just an egg sandwich.” Sasha shrugged. 

It was the most delicious thing Angel had ever eaten. She had eaten many other things, of course, but they were either in years too young to remember or in a sterile room with the taste of iron and acid in her mouth overpowering any other flavors. 

Sasha didn’t mention any of Angel’s mistakes. It was as if she had forgotten about them. Or maybe didn’t care. Sasha didn’t seem like a particularly good actress. Angel was still wary.

“So what’s up with the sword?” Sasha asked through a mouthful of bread and egg. “You don’t seem like the swashbuckling type.”

“People don’t mess with people with swords,” Angel replied. “I’ve got a few guns, but people tend to be more wary around a girl with a sword than a girl with a gun.”

“Maybe I should get a sword.” The idea of being unapproachable, regularly avoided, and universally feared seemed to appeal to Sasha immensely.

The sun sliced through the windshield of the caravan and illuminated the interior in golden light. It caught Sasha’s eyes and gave them new colors as she turned her head: here, they were the transparent emerald of glass bottles, and then she leaned down to take a bite of her sandwich and they turned to pools of honey streaked with lightning. Angel noticed new things about Sasha every moment.

“There’s a town a few miles away,” Sasha said. “We’ll stop there. I can get groceries. You can get me a new health vial. And whatever else you want. Not too much, though. I don’t like to stay in these places too long.”

Angel zipped her jacket up to her neck and nodded.

She ended up buying a mask with a voice modulator—expensive, Sasha commented—along with a cracked ECHO tablet, several health vials for Sasha, and some miscellaneous supplies. She hesitated in the dingy clothing store, perusing shirts with great reluctance. 

_It’s hard to let go of something that has its thorns dug into your palms._

“What about this one?” Sasha called, holding up a green, slightly armored shirt for Angel to look at. It had been tossed into a forgotten clearance bin, apparently. 

Sasha knew what Angel would like better than she did, apparently, because Angel knew immediately she had to have it.

“Perfect,” she said. 

About fifty miles and a heated debate about whether or not water was wet later (it’s not wet, Sasha said, it just makes things wet, and her logic was sound despite Angel’s frustration), Sasha pulled the caravan over.

“I found this place a few months back,” she said, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “C’mon. I think you’re gonna like this.”

“Where are we going?” Angel asked as Sasha stepped out into the punishingly hot sun.

“It’s a secret.”

The landscape was hilly and full of twisted trees and brush, yet Sasha seemed to unerringly know the way. They hiked for about fifteen minutes, after which Angel’s ankles were scratched and she could feel burning on the back of her neck.  
“Welcome,” Sasha proclaimed as they crested the final hill, “to the oasis.”

Angel gasped. Spread out in a little valley between the hills was a perfect circle of water, reflecting the sun like a sparkling mirror and dotted with shade trees along the shores. Sasha bounded down the hill.

“C’mon in,” she called over her shoulder, “the water’s great.”

She paused only to take her boots off before running and diving into the water. Angel laughed as she resurfaced, flinging water from her locks like a dog shaking its head.

“I can’t swim,” Angel told her as she removed her shoes.

“It’s shallow,” Sasha replied. “Perfect for learning.”

Angel braced herself and ran into the water. The cool lake was perfect after hours of heat.

“It’s cold!” she exclaimed happily. 

“Dip your head under,” Sasha encouraged.

With some trepidation, Angel plugged her nose and dipped her head underwater. She emerged laughing, her hair lining to her face and neck in long, wet strands. She could practically fell the dust and blood peeling away from her skin and clothes. She’d had no baths except the rain and the rivers she forded since her escape; she’d had too many scalding showers and disinfectant sprays for her to be comfortable with bathing. Her stomach hurt less than it had on the hike; the water seemed to cradle her, keeping any exertion from aggravating her wounds.

Sasha began floating on her back with her eyes closed, stirring the water lazily with her hands. Angel didn’t try to do the same; she was content to remain with her feet planted in the soft silt.

“It’s so peaceful here,” Sasha said.

“It’s beautiful,” Angel agreed, watching the way her hair spread like snakes through the still water and the harsh sun turned her skin to terracotta. 

Angel barely had time to register a sly glance before Sasha twirled like a seal and unleashed a splash of water in Angel’s direction. Angel squealed and brought her hands up to her face.

“Oh, it’s on!”

Angel didn’t have much experience with splash fights, but she gave as good as she got. Just as Angel’s arms began to ache, Sasha launched herself at Angel, plunging both of them underwater.

Their eyes met in that bottle-green expanse, and there was a breathless moment where time seemed to stop, as if the sands of the hourglass had halted in Sasha’s mischievous grin and the glint of her seafoam eyes. 

Then it was over, and they both emerged breathless from water and laughter. Angel’s hair fell in front of her face, and Sasha pushed it aside. 

“This is pretty much the only nice place on Pandora,” Sasha laughed. 

“Really?” Angel asked. “I haven’t really seen much of it, but it can’t be all bad.”

Sasha shrugged.

“I mean, Helios is _safe_ , but that’s not the same thing as nice, you know?” She returned to floating on her back. “This is a place where I can feel peaceful. Just me and the water…and the really hot sun.” She paddled into a shadier spot.

Angel’s presence in this seemingly sacred place didn’t seem to bother Sasha. Which was weird. Angel didn’t generally make people feel safe. 

Angel felt safe here. She wasn’t sure if it was Sasha or the oasis. Either way, it was nice to feel safe without sacrificing any freedom.

She dug her toes into the silt and basked in the sun.


	6. Bunkers and Vaults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They approach Helios.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow this one's chugging along huh  
> usually i abandon every single work within 3k but this au just hit 10k so yay me

Sasha took a turn too hard and one of the drawers came clattering out of the kitchen cabinet, spilling its contents all over the caravan floor. Angel looked up from her ECHO tablet with a start. 

“Shit,” Sasha declared.

“I got it,” Angel told her.

The drawer had been full of papers, a folded piece of glossy cardboard, and a few little pieces of plastic. Angel began to gather up the clutter. As she did, the combination of miniatures, dice, and pre-printed sheets finally clicked in her brain.

“Hey, Sasha,” she called, “is this a game of Bunkers and Badasses?”

Sasha glanced over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” she said carefully, “I forgot I still had that.”

Angel waited before asking her next question. It wasn’t good to ask too many questions in a row.

“Can I take a look?” 

“Knock yourself out.” 

The papers consisted of four character sheets and a page of scribbled notes on initiative order and armor class. Angel started with the character sheets. 

Vaughn the psycho. Fiona the lawbringer. Athena the soldier—Angel recognized the neat handwriting, it was _the_ Athena. And Sasha the Siren.

How did Sasha know Athena well enough to play B&B with her? More importantly, how did a lone scavenger manage to even organize a game of B&B?

The BM had scrawled a date on the top of their notes. Two years ago.

“Go ahead and throw that stuff out when you’re done,” Sasha told her. “It’s not a very good game anyway.”

Angel gave a noise of affirmation and returned to the character sheets, hoping to glean something about who filled them out. Sasha’s old friends. Maybe even her family as of two years ago.

Vaughn’s character features had obviously been changed many times. At first, Angel thought this was simply indecision, but as she continued to read and recall her foggy knowledge of the game, she realized his buzzaxe-wielding character was minmaxed to Elpis and back. Under “personality traits,” he had written “heroic” and “knows how to deal with any situation.” Hence the surprisingly high Street Smarts score.

“Who’s Vaughn?” Angel asked Sasha, bracing herself.

“Oh, Vaughn? You’ll meet him at Helios. He runs the whole place now.” She snorted. “He used to be an accountant. Now he’s a bandit boss. The guy really loves numbers.”

That explained the optimization. 

“He’s pretty much the only thing between Helios and total backstabbing anarchy,” Sasha continued. “And he pays me pretty well for parts.”

“Can’t wait to meet him.”

Angel could, in fact, wait to meet him. “Former Hyperion employee” was not a description that placed someone high on her “trust” list. She moved on to the next sheet. 

Athena’s sheet may as well have been an official report on her own abilities, attributes, and personality traits. Role-play obviously wasn’t one of her strengths. 

And then there was Fiona’s character, a fast-talking smooth-operator gunslinger with dual pistols, a bullwhip, and an inventory full of stolen goods. Her character notes contained a backstory a mile long and her stats telegraphed a series of extremely good rolls. Her handwriting was cursive and accentuated rakish flourishes, and the margins of the character sheet had several very bad doodles.

It gave Angel absolutely no insight. The whole sheet was a slick story. 

“What about Fiona?” Angel asked. “Another person from Helios?”

She heard Sasha hiss as if she’d been punched in the throat.

“Fiona’s no one,” Sasha replied sharply. 

Angel quietly set Fiona’s sheet aside with trembling hands and moved on. For her Siren power, Sasha had chosen the ability to fly. Her character was a space pirate. 

“Do you want to be a space pirate?” Angel called after she’d gathered her nerves. She bit her lip and clenched her fists as she waited for the answer.

“I wouldn’t say no. Beats driving around on this rock.”

“How’d your game go?”

Sasha sighed. It sounded more wistful than exasperated.

“You know, how most games go. I don’t…remember much. It wasn’t a long game or anything.”

One advantage of being a manipulator for years was that Angel knew when someone was lying. 

She shrugged and threw the set in the trash like Sasha had instructed. Except the Siren minifigure and a cracked 20-sided die. Those she guiltily slipped into her jacket pocket. 

“Oh, by the way,” Sasha continued, “I packed your bag last night.”

Angel’s chest froze up. Sasha had been in her stuff. She squeaked out something vaguely resembling a thanks to keep up appearances, but her breathing was too loud to hide.

“I put some snacks in there,” Sasha told her. “The whole rations system can be hard to figure out.”

“I…” Angel meant to thank her. She meant to cover up the rope that was twisting in her chest and threatening to snap. Her breathing was so loud.

Sasha glanced over her shoulder with an expression of concern or maybe frustration. They looked so similar. It was the expression Angel associated with rejoinders and yelling, with thinly veiled hostility under honey-sweet incentives.

“Was…that not okay?” Sasha asked. “Ah, shit, sorry. I shouldn’t have gone through your stuff after I yelled at you about the stupid photo. That was shitty of me.” 

Her glance now was a new expression. Angel racked her brain and decided it was apologetic. 

“It’s okay,” Angel whispered in a husky voice. She cleared her throat. “It’s—it’s fine. I d-don’t have anything to hide.”

“I won’t go through your stuff again,” Sasha replied, a line that belonged to a totally different conversation. She peered through the windshield. “We’re here.”

Angel walked up behind Sasha and looked over her shoulder. Between two rocky hills she could see huge shards of the broken space station stabbing the sky. At the base of the crumbling eye were some small rectangles that gradually resolved themselves into ramshackle dwellings.

It was different than she remembered. There were structures, including a cobbled-together greenhouse. And in the dusty plain in front of the eye was an unmistakable stone archway. The door to a Vault. 

“A Vault was opened here?” Angel asked in a hushed voice. 

Sasha’s knuckles turned white on the wheel.

“Word of advice?” Sasha said. “Don’t have anything to do with Vaults. They’re nothing but trouble.”

“I’ll…keep that in mind.”

It was a lesson Angel had learned the hard way. She hoped Sasha’s experience hadn’t been as bad.


	7. Helios and its Guardian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel meets the Sun King. Sasha leaves.

“So, I’ll take you to see Vaughn, and he’ll get you set up for as long as you want to stay here.”

“Are you leaving?”

“I have to drop off these parts with Yvette, but then, yeah. Probably for a few weeks.”

Angel nodded, trying not to look too dejected. Helios was new and untrustworthy. Sasha was also new, but Angel felt safer with her than with the faceless Vaughn. 

As they walked towards the entrance to the fallen Eye, the looming archway of the Vault cast a cold shadow over the yellow dust. Ange’s gaze was riveted on the imposing stone, cracked and crumbling, a beacon of fear and yet somehow comforting. 

A bit past the base of the Vault, a blur of blue and purple, at first just a dim fuzz, resolved itself into a shape. Two shapes. 

“What’s that?” Angel asked, pointing them out to Sasha.

Sasha frowned, squinting in the general direction Angel was pointing.

“What’s what?”

“The blue and purple at the base of the archway. Kind of looks like two people walking?”

“I don’t see anything.” Sasha looked at Angel suspiciously. “Are you hallucinating?” Her voice rose in pitch. “You saw a blue figure? A person? Was it a man?” 

Angel took a step back and glanced back at the shapes.

“I-I can’t tell,” she stammered. “I don’t know. Maybe I need water.”

The shapes fizzled and winked out of existence. She rubbed her eyes.

“Tell me if you see anything like that again, okay?”

Angel nodded mutely and cursed herself for her fear. Sasha turned away and beckoned Angel to follow.

————

“You can trust Vaughn,” Sasha told her outside the door of the office, “if you ever have trouble here.”

She couldn’t tell if her reassurances helped Angel, who was standing completely still, her face unreadable behind the mask she’d donned. Just another psycho.

“I don’t plan on staying long,” Angel said softly. “I’m not a fan of Hyperion.”

“Well, at least you’re reasonable,” Sasha said drily. “I have to say, I’m also not super psyched about trying to rebuild the wreckage of the universe’s most bloodthirsty corporation, but it pays well.” 

She threw open the door.

“Uh,” Vaughn said, looking up from his computer, “you may come in.”

“Hi, Vaughn,” Sasha greeted. Angel remained near the doorway and seemed to shrink three sizes.

“You could knock once in a while. Switch things up,” Vaughn sighed.

“This is Angel”

Angel offered a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Angel’s voice was totally calm. She radiated control and confidence that Sasha could only assume was false. 

“I’ll just…leave you guys to it. I’m going to drop off these things with Yvette,” Sasha told them.

She didn’t shut the door behind her.

————

Vaughn’s salvaged armor and long hair was offset by a slouching and slightly bemused demeanor that made him seem far less threatening than he no doubt was. He gestured for Angel to sit down on the ratty armchair on the opposite side of the desk.

“Welcome to Helios,” he said.

“You must be a busy man,” Angel replied. “Do you meet personally with every bandit that wants to move in?”

“No,” Vaughn admitted. “But I was curious. Sasha doesn’t trust easy, you know. Also you don’t know how to drive, which is weird.” He put his feet up on the desk, as if he’d only just remembered to act imposing yet nonchalant. The desk, on closer inspection was revealed to be a dresser that had been sawn in half. “Sasha tells me you have some skill with computers.”

“You guys talked about me?” Angel’s fingers curled into fists out of Vaughn’s line of sight.

“I asked a lot of questions.” Angel saw the glint of something shrewd in Vaughn’s eyes, as if he was scanning her. “I keep telling her she should branch out, meet new people, that sort of thing. Networking…isn’t her strong suit.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why is there a giant Vault gate on your front lawn?

“We opened a Vault.”

“So I gathered.”

Vaughn sighed. “It’s…a long story. Happened about a year ago. And it’s not a story I want to tell. Don’t bother asking anyone here about it—they’ve already developed a whole mythology. Like, with a bible and everything. It’s actually really creepy. They nearly mutinied when I confiscated some of their sacred texts.”

For all his curiosity, Vaughn wasn’t asking a lot of questions. Angel was familiar with accountants. He probably didn’t need questions to gather all the information he wanted. 

Angel didn’t press the issue. She almost did, so accustomed had she become to talking with Sasha, but she was still wary of Vaughn. He didn’t look out of place in the patched-up Hyperion office the way Sasha had. Vaughn seemed closed off anyway, as if mention of the mysterious Vault reminded him of a mystery he’d rather leave untouched. 

“Come on,” Vaughn said, standing up. “I’ll get you a place to stay. Yvette’ll give you work assignments sometime this week.”

———

Vaughn got Angel set up in a little room in the upstairs of a “house” belonging to Dr. and Mrs. Samuels.

“You’re in what we call the Wing district,” he explained. 

“The…what?” Angel asked.

“The Wing district. We sort of have two groups here: the Eyes, who were on Helios when it fell and are…prone to hero worship, and the Wings, who’re people who were hurt by Hyperion and have nowhere else to go.”

“Do things get ugly between them?”

Vaughn shrugged. 

“I managed to convince the Eyes a while back that the man they worship,” he said with obvious revulsion, “strictly forbade—forbids violence. So that helped.”

“So you’re a Wing,” Angel reasoned. “You don’t seem to be a fan of these people.” It was a presumption based more on hope than observation.

Vaughn’s mouth twisted thoughtfully. 

“They’re all right. I mean, I only left Helios a month before it fell, but that still put me in a position to guide the others about life on Pandora.” He cleared some clutter off the scrap metal counter and fluffed the pillow on the cot. “What about you, Angel? What brings you riding in Sasha’s van to Helios? You don’t seem to like Hyperion much.”

“I heard this place is relatively free of bandits.”

Vaughn snorted. “Gets more and more like a bandit camp every day. I’m not entirely sure it’s a bad thing.” He patted the doorframe. “Anyway, you should be good here. Dr. and Mrs. Samuels will be happy to help you get settled around here. They’re a nice couple.” He began to leave the cramped apartment.

“I have one last question,” Angel said.

“Shoot.”

“Who’s Rhys?”

Vaughn froze as if turned to stone.

“Why do you ask?” Every word was placed as if one mistake would cause an explosion.

“I heard his name mentioned in conjunction with the fall of Helios.” It stood to reason that any Hyperion worker would be sensitive about the man who brought their whole world crashing down.

Vaughn sighed. Angel knew a weary sigh of frustration when she heard one.

“The man the Eyes worship,” he murmured. “The man who took down Helios with a stun baton.” His teeth worked his lower lip. “An old friend.” Vaughn turned away from Angel. “He’s…away right now.”

And with that, Vaughn left.

———

Angel didn’t mean to eavesdrop. All she had meant to do was find Sasha to say goodbye and maybe ask if she needed any help packing. It wasn’t her fault that Sasha and Vaughn began a heated argument just as Angel was about to enter Vaughn’s office.

“This could be our chance to find them, Sasha,” Vaughn told her. “All we need is to get in, and it could give us all the answers!”

“A Hyperion black box isn’t going to have anything that won’t turn a profit. You really think those bloodsuckers will have anything to help us?”

“It’s got all their research on anything Eridian! Mining sites, Vault notes, experiments, all of it! If there’s even the tiniest chance, shouldn’t we take it?”

_All their research on anything Eridian. Every note from every experiment._

“It doesn’t matter,” Sasha snapped. “There’s only one person with the password, and…Unless you have a computer expert on hand who can out-hack Handsome _fucking_ Jack, we’re done.”

“Then we’ll find one. He couldn’t have been the best, right?”

“Oh, how you bootlickers have grown! Finally admitting he wasn’t the best at everything! What’s next, admitting he committed war crimes? That everyone here was complicit in?”

The “including you” lingered unsaid in the air.

“What is your problem?” Vaughn asked more calmly than the question warranted. “You do this every time! Why can’t you just work with m—“

“Because they’re not coming back!” Sasha cried. “You need to get that into your head! They’re gone!”

“You have no evidence for that. You don’t know that.”

Two hands slammed onto a table.

“It’s been a year! They don’t want to come back and just because you couldn’t see their true colors because you were too busy swooning over Rhys—“

“That’s not fair, Sasha,” Vaughn said, almost too quietly for Angel to hear.

“They ran away!” Sasha’s voice was raw and broken. “They chose the money over us, and I’m not looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

Her angry footsteps pounded out the door. Angel managed to duck into a closet just in time. 

“Ask Angel to help with your dumb project,” Sasha called as she stormed out. “I trust her more than any other hacker on this dump.”

Angel remained frozen in the closet long enough to hear Sasha’s decisive footsteps fade down the hallway. She heard Vaughn sigh and his chair creak. 

“I didn’t ‘swoon’ over him,” he muttered, justifying himself to no one in particular. 

Angel still had only snippets of this mystery, and she wasn’t sure if it was her place to solve it. It was none of her business. But that black box was her business.

It had everything on Angel. All that had been done to her. Everything about her.

She had to get it before they found the truth.

———-

“Goodbye,” Angel said. There wasn’t more to say. There was more to say, and she couldn’t say it.

“Goodbye,” Sasha said. She smiled. There was nothing more to it. There was more to it, and Angel couldn’t find it.  
They exchanged ECHO frequencies. As a formality. Sasha told Angel where to find the bounty to erase. And Sasha left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally a lot shorter but ppl expressed interest in angel meeting vaughn so here we are! i love yalls feedback sm


	8. Day One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel has an idle day finishing a job and meeting the neighbors.

Angel woke up to knocking.

“Hello!” a melodious, Hyperborean-accented voice announced from outside the door. “We’ve made a welcome breakfast!” 

Angel blearily roused herself and shoved her bandana and goggles over her face before making her way to the door. She had a moment of panic on remembering how messy her room was; her bag was still slouching in a corner.

On the other side of the door was a chubby woman of about 40 or so with wavy dark hair, a pleasant smile, and a web of scars crisscrossing every inch of exposed skin. Angel recognized some of them; they lingered along her own spine, and she winced in sympathy.

“I’m Oleta Samuels,” the stranger—or, rather, neighbor—introduced with an outstretched hand. Angel took it. “My wife and I made some breakfast, would you like to join us?”

“I would love to,” Angel replied. “Thank you.”

Oleta led her to their downstairs apartment, from which emanated a delicious smell of meat and eggs. The scrap-metal walls were almost hidden by all the trappings of a home; the ratty couch had a knitted throw, and the tiny kitchen contained a mess of red iron cookware. It was a nice place.

“It’s not much,” Oleta said modestly, “but it’s home.”

A bony woman with close-cropped blonde hair and glasses was already sitting at the kitchen table. She smiled at Angel with detached warmth. 

“Welcome to Helios,” she said. “I’m Hester. Go ahead and sit down!”

Angel followed the command with wariness yet without hesitation. The eggs and bacon on her plate were arranged in the shape of a smile.

_Her parents made her breakfast that way when she was little, because back then they couldn’t come up with enough ways to show their love._

“Thank you very much,” she murmured.

“Would you like to take your bandanna off, dearie?” Oleta asked. “Can’t eat through fabric!”

Angel wordlessly pulled down the bandanna covering her mouth. The voice modulator remained attached at her throat. Oleta and Hester both gave her smiles of understanding. 

“Where are my manners?” Oleta smacked her forehead. “What’s your name, neighbor?”

“Angel.” 

“Beautiful name,” Hester commented.

It wasn’t sincere. Hester froze up at the name. Angel filed this away. 

The breakfast was delicious, and the conversation was very informative. Angel learned their opinion of Vaughn (such a nice young gentleman), some new information about the dynamics of Helios, and where the best place to hunt rakk was. Not that she planned on hunting anytime soon. She needed some rest.

And she learned more about her neighbors. She learned that Hester stiffened at any mention of Hyperion, with the signature tremble of guilt at the corners of her mouth. Pain lurked behind every one of Oleta’s sunshine-accented words. One of the panels making up their kitchen wall had an engraving of Handsome Jack on it at one point—it had been erased with manic scratches that scored silver lines into the metal. 

They welcomed her into their home, but she did not feel welcome. They were not welcome in her heart. No one was.

—————

The ECHOnet connection was spotty in the apartment, so Angel perched on a rocky bluff overlooking the wreckage-turned-village. It was easy to find Sasha’s bounty. While she was by no means Hollow Point’s most wanted, she’d racked up quite a litany of charges, all hidden under some crude scrambling. Also she’d apparently been a DJ. Angel dimly remembering listening to DJ Rakk Attack while monitoring insurrectionist activity, and the missed connection made her feel a bit weird. She hadn’t even felt any deja vu listening to Sasha’s voice. 

That wasn’t the most interesting part. The most interesting part was Sasha’s known associates—Fiona and Felix. They were far older on their bounties, but unmistakably the people from the forgotten picture.

So this was the lawbringer, the nobody. Three grifters, inseparable by the looks of it. The last activity on their bounties was a few visits to the page by Hyperion and some bandit gang. Two years and one month ago.

Angel started the process of erasing all of Sasha’s data from the ECHOnet. She left Fiona and Felix alone. Sasha hadn’t told her to erase those. As her tablet whirred away at the task, she got a message. From Sasha.

_how’s helios treating you_

Angel tapped a reply.

_It’s fine. It will take some getting used to, but it’s a great place to stay for a bit._

A few seconds. And then…

_haha nerd you punctuate echo net messages_

The comment made Angel weirdly self-conscious. This seemed to be a new rule that went against everything Angel had learned. Then again, the list of things Angel had learned before three or so years ago was a list of recommendations best left unfollowed. 

_i’m kidding. it’s nice to hear ur doing ok_

_just checking in <3 gtg_

Angel laid down the ECHO tablet and basked in the sun. She kept glancing over, waiting for another message. It seemed odd for someone to check in on her with no concern other than for her wellbeing. That wasn’t the purpose of checking in. 

_Just checking in, pumpkin. How’s the key going?_

Angel closed her eyes and squeezed her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms, grounding her in reality. She could feel the sun begin to burn the little gap between her mask and the scarf wrapped around her head, and she focused on that feeling. The feeling of warmth rushing through her skin. 

She focused on the warmth inside, too. She focused on the feeling rushing through her chest from the moment she saw it was Sasha messaging her. It took her a bit before she could place it, because it had been so long since her feelings had been anything but cold.

It was the feeling, back when she still had a home, of walking through the door, and knowing safety and love were waiting for her there. 

By the time she returned to her little room, she had a healthy sunburn.


	9. Heist And A Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel intends to steal a drive she doesn't need and ends up with some whiskey she doesn't want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall wanted angel and vaughn content....i delivered

_Her legs were so shaky._

_Legs barely used to walking and lungs barely used to breathing and blood barely used to being clean. She felt like her bones would break with every touch of the hard objects of the real world. Like her trembling hands could lift nothing heavier than a feather._

_She trembled and cowered in fear of the open sky, screamed as the first rain touched her fragile skin, huddled under the rocks to hide from the beating sun that turned her skin to red peeling bark with a touch._

_She wandered with empty stomach and empty heart. There was nothing to search for, nothing to feel. Just the harsh dust in her throat and the hard ground against her blistered feet, the deep deep wound that traced down her abdomen festering and burning._

_She constantly looked over her shoulder, terrified of the man with a familiar face and his flickering brothers, the man who decided he deserved the terrifying sky more than she did—_

Angel woke up with a shuddering inhale that almost turned into a scream before she clamped her hands over her mouth. She bolted upright in her cot and scrambled for the light switch. She scanned every corner of the room before slumping back into her makeshift bed, satisfied that no one lurked in waiting. 

As if on cue, her ECHO tablet beeped the quiet alarm she’d set the night before. She knew where the drive was. All she had to do was slip into Vaughn’s office—there was no way he was there at this hour—and steal it. A simple plan. A very important plan. 

Angel was good at making plans. The universe was not good at cooperating with them. 

_She hadn’t planned to be alive, so she didn’t care if she lived—she faced down Pandora’s deadliest in the hopes that they’d fix her mistake, but some desperate and volatile spark seemed to always kick in at the last second, leaving nothing but a new scar for her troubles._

She rubbed her eyes harder than was necessary to clear the sleep away from them. Vaughn had said there was something essential in that drive. Something that could help them find Rhys and someone else. Fiona, maybe. It was obviously very important to Vaughn. Did Angel really have any right to take that from him?

_I’ll just take the stuff I need,_ Angel promised herself. _Just copy it over to my tablet and put the rest back._

Helios was so quiet in the nighttime. The usual hum and bustle was gone, replaced with the occasional zombie-like resident wandering through halls that smelled of metal and dust. As Angel turned the corner into the accounting hallway, she nearly crashed into Vaughn. Encountering him was awkward, since she was on her way to rob him.

“Oh, hey,” said Vaughn. “What’re you doing up so late?”

“Can’t sleep,” Angel told him. “What about you?”

Vaughn sighed. “Same.” He perked up a little. “Hey, as long as you’re awake, I wanted to talk to you about something.” He began to walk back the way he’d come, gesturing for Angel to follow. “C’mon.”

Angel nervously followed Vaughn to his office. It looked so different in the dark. The coat rack and the impromptu ammo storage box cast long shadows that twisted into almost human shapes, and the previously fairly sparse room seemed somehow so much more full. The only light came from a flickering lamp on the salvaged desk. Angel noticed a silver coffee maker tucked into a corner, humming and trickling brown liquid into a pot. Vaughn took a moment to water a sad-looking potted plant before turning back to Angel.

“So,” he said. “I heard you can code.”

“It’s…a hobby of mine, yes.”

Vaughn rummaged through his desk drawers and produced a small silver hard drive. It was fairly hefty, obviously containing either huge volumes of data or a colossal amount of security. 

“How much do you know about the Eridians? Vaults, Sirens, that sort of thing.”

Angel’s chest tightened around her lungs as she reassured herself that there was no way Vaughn knew anything. It was an innocuous question, nothing more.

“A little,” she replied. “I’ve looked into the topic once or twice.” Or hundreds of times. Lived the topic, bled the topic, died for her knowledge and her power, lived the topic again as punishment for a lifetime of evil.

“I need information on the Vault of the Traveler. Specifically what’s inside it. And I think this,” he held up the drive, “has what I need.”

“So why tell me?” There seemed to be little to no reason why he would tell her.

Vaughn sighed. “Well, there are only two people with authorization to access its contents. Handsome Jack and an unknown user.” He shrugged. “Jack’s dead, fortunately. Unfortunately, without him or his unknown user, we’re locked out.”

“Don’t you have hackers among the old Hyperion employees?”

“Handsome Jack was a bastard, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a computer genius. We, um…no, no there isn’t anyone here that I’d trust to give it a try, least of all successfully.” His fingers tapped nervously against his thigh. “I’m afraid I don’t have any hacker friends, and I don’t trust anyone Hyperion with information on the Vaults. So you’re our best shot.”

Vaughn was lying. About something. Maybe it was a trap. 

“I’ll get you what you need,” Angel promised. 

Vaughn handed over the drive, surprisingly. Angel had no idea why he trusted her.

“One more question,” Angel asked as she exited the office. “Why the Vault of the Traveler?”

Vaughn was silent for an awkward amount of time before responding.

“My friends disappeared into it. I’d do anything to get them back.”

“Your friends?”

“Rhys and Fiona.” The names were strangled, as if he hadn’t practiced saying them in a long time. “They were—they are good people.”

_Oh._

So that was Sasha’s sister. The slick-talking con woman had been lost to the Eridians. Angel felt like she understood more about Sasha—and like she understood nothing at all. Her anger remained alien.

And Rhys. That was the pain in Vaughn’s voice when he said his name. He was gone, sacrificed to a dream of fame and fortune.

“Sasha’s sister?” Angel said softly.

“Don’t…talk to her about this,” Vaughn advised. “She took it…well, I don’t wanna say worse than I did, because it was a blow to all of us, but…”

“I understand.” She truly did. Angel could still remember when someone she loved had been lost to something alien and dangerous. She held up the drive. “I guess I’ll get started on this, then.”

“Wanna get a drink?” Vaughn asked suddenly. Angel gave him a quizzical tilt of her head, and he held up his hands in surrender. “In a totally platonic way. Insomnia’s just better with company.”

Angel sat back down in front of the desk. Vaughn took this as permission to pull a bottle of amber liquid from behind the potted plant. He passed Angel a shot glass.

“To friends, new and old,” he said. They clinked glasses. Angel pulled down her bandana, took a sip, and immediately gagged. It was disgusting.

“That’s Moxxi’s finest whiskey!” Vaughn laughed. 

“Sorry,” Angel managed to choke out. Her mouth was on fire. Not to mention her tongue tasted like piss. “Never had alcohol before.”

“Man, from what I’ve seen of Pandora, that should be impossible. Hey, I remember my first drink. Stole it from my parent’s pantry. It put me off alcohol till college.” He took another sip. “I never liked the stuff much, but down here you sort of develop a taste for it.”

“I’ll pass.” Angel scrunched up her face. 

Vaughn shrugged and downed the remainder of her drink. “More for me.”

“What was your college drinking experience like?” she asked.

Vaughn groaned and leaned back in his seat.

“Oh, god. I only went to parties to seem cool and because Rhys was there, and only drank so people wouldn’t pick on me. Blacked out a few times, then learned to switch it out for juice. Kept in a little flask with the college logo on it.” He laughed, but it was a sad laugh. “I had to carry Rhys home quite a few times. He got—gets shitfaced after two shots.”

Angel scanned Vaughn’s beard, sculpted muscles, and sidearm. “People picked on you?”

“Oh, hang on.” He rummaged through a side drawer of his desk before triumphantly producing a picture. He didn’t look at it long, as if it hurt him. “This is me and Rhys three years ago.”

The picture was of two clearly Hyperion men smiling at the camera, their arms around each other shoulders. One was tall and lanky, with a red tie and vest, slicked back hair, and an ECHO eye. The other was short and looked like an absolute nerd, complete with glasses and a bowtie. It took Angel several moments to realize that was Vaughn.

“That’s you?” she said incredulously.

“I don’t like to parade my old face around,” Vaughn confessed. “It’s…well, I’ve started over.” He winked. “Our secret.”

Angel laughed. Vaughn had an easy charm about him. Despite all indications that he could kill the average person in five seconds, Angel found him entirely nonthreatening. He reminded her a little of Brick. 

“I don’t even remember what I was doing three years ago,” Angel confessed. “Learning to sword fight? Wandering around?” It had taken years for her mind to clear enough for her memory to recover. She gave Vaughn a contemplative gaze. “What was it like, working for Hyperion? Do you miss it?”

Vaughn poured himself more whiskey.

“I was damn good at what I did, and it was way safer than Pandora. God, I wouldn’t go back if you paid me ten million dollars! It’s like I never even lived until I got down here.” He scoffed and took a sip from his shot glass. “I mean, sure, it was a fine place for everyone who liked hero worship and constant backstabbing, not to mention all the holiday parties that either turned into gunfights or orgies, but I’m glad the space station collapsed.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, not glad, obviously, because all of the people that died, but…yeah.” He quickly changed the subject. “So you and Sasha got along well.”

“She’s…nice.” Angel toyed with the empty glass in her hands. “Not many people down here would have saved me like that.” She looked up at Vaughn, at the fond smile stretching across his surprisingly well-groomed beard. “How well do you know her?”

“We go way back. Well, not that much way back. The first time we really met, she almost conned me—us—out of ten million dollars and then her sister held me at gunpoint.” He chuckled. “Good times. Good, terrifying times. Anyway, she’s not as scary as she looks. I mean, she still scares the crap outta me sometimes, but she’s got a good heart.” His face turned pensive. “We…don’t talk as much as we used to.”

“This whole Vault thing really turned your lives upside down, huh,” Angel said softly.

Vaughn nodded.

“I’ve gotten involved in a few Vaults in my time,” Angel continued carefully. “Nothing good has ever come of it.” She shrugged. “But there’s nothing I can do about that now.” Just that simple truth seemed to stick on her tongue on its way into the air, as if her brain was having a hard time believing it. 

Angel stood up and handed the glass back to Vaughn.

“Thanks for the drink. Well, actually, I didn’t like the drink.” Candidness was still a skill she was having trouble learning. “But thanks for the conversation. I think I might be able to sleep now. I’ll start in on that drive in the morning.”

Vaughn smiled wistfully. 

“Hopefully we’ll learn something.”


	10. One Week In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel finishes going through the drive, and finds a lost memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has some uhhh kinda squicky body horror stuff just fyi

One week since Angel had started on the data drive. Which was to say, a bit more than six days since Angel had accessed the data on the drive. It only would have taken her two days to break through the firewalls—but she didn’t have to. She had permission to access the drive. After all, she was in charge of overseeing all Vault matters. One of Handsome Jack’s biggest mistakes re: task delegation. Even the folders that were off-limits were easily accessible with her extensive knowledge of Jack’s passwords. In this case, “extensive knowledge” just meant that she only had to memorize the three or so passwords that Jack used for literally everything, like some sort of rookie who didn’t know what basic security was. 

The six days were spent trawling through all that data and offloading anything with any remote mention of Angel onto her own thumb drive. She also flagged a folder full of Hyperion’s scarce research on the Vault of the Traveler. They’d actually been able to pick up the Vault’s energy signature once or twice and matched it to Lilith’s, but Angel didn’t really see how that was going to help Vaughn recover his friends. 

And then she found one last folder. That one had taken a bit. It was behind every conceivable layer of security, with no possible point of access even for an authorized user, as if Jack had wanted to forget about it yet had been unwilling to part with it. 

When she finally viewed the folder, it was named: Guardian Project Termination Notes. 

There was a single document and several videos and folders. She opened the document. 

It recounted in clinical and detached language how the Guardian Project was “prematurely terminated” by the Crimson Raiders and how it was already “defective” before that event. The “subject” of the Guardian Project was removed for examination and autopsy. 

Autopsy. 

Autopsy was a procedure performed on the dead.

She watched the video. 

“Guardian project autopsy report,” said a bored male voice. Dr. Garruson. The one scientist who worked on the Guardian Project for more than a month or two. He was discreet, and he was evil, and naturally Handsome Jack trusted him as much as he could trust anyone. 

The camera pivoted to the body on the operating table, not even yet pallid with the cold grip of death. Angel remained frozen for a solid two seconds before shutting off her tablet. 

It was her. It was Angel. It was Angel, dead and cold and stiff on an operating table. It was Angel, a specter turned corpse turned zombie. 

After a timeless minute of agonizing curiousity, she reopened the video.

“Subject exhibits little of the usual postmortem body processes, instead almost exhibiting an overall state characteristic of suspended animation, if not for the clear fact that it is deceased.”

_It._ The pronoun was used not because Garruson was deciding to be disrespectful, but because the overseer of that project had never given the scientist cause to believe that the “subject” was anything but an object. After all, why listen to the girl he was being paid to dissect? What value could her thoughts possibly add?

“This inconsistency is likely due to eridium remaining in the system, something which I intend to investigate. Making the primary incision now.”

Angel watched as the hated man drew his scalpel across her pale skin, tracing a perfect, hair-thin line across her chest. Her hand leaped unconsciously to that spot, tracing the gnarled scar whose origin had so long eluded her.

“Now cutting subcutaneous muscle layer.”

Angel watched, detached, as he took a laser cutter to slice through the muscle covering her sternum. It barely even bled. She’d watched some of her surgeries happen in real time, in painful detail, without the merciful distance a camera provided, so this novelty was nothing in comparison. It was totally detached. The body on the table did not belong to anyone she knew. It was not upsetting.

Somewhere offscreen, an explosion sounded, followed by gunshots. _The Crimson Raiders._

“What the hell?” Garrison barked. He leaned into the ECHO on his shoulder. “Status report!” 

In the video, Angel’s hair was splayed out across the metal, no longer covering her left eye. Her lavender eye, her final gift from a long-gone mother. 

Two twin chips of blue and purple snapped open, stark bursts of color against cold steel and pale skin. A contrast with the slick, disgusting yellow of the operating theatre. Blood gushed from her chest. 

The Angel on screen screamed, and a gunshot sounded, and the video degenerated into static. 

The other Angel, the Angel who had just watched this, sat stunned, her fingers still hovering over her scar.

The Crimson Raiders hadn’t kept her from dying, as she’d thought. She’d kept herself from dying long enough for them to get there. 

So why didn’t she remember any of it? Why was her most recent memory after the Vault Hunters of waking up with stitches in her chest and a strange yet familiar man by her bedside, signing a deal to get himself off planet in exchange for Angel? The Crimson Raiders must have pulled her from that place. 

How was she alive? Was it the Eridium?

She’d just been handed an interesting problem, nothing more. It was odd, to watch the vessel she inhabited be mutilated on an operating table and feel nothing. Like she’d watched someone smash her ECHO tablet. Upsetting, but it was just a thing. 

Angel took that folder onto her thumb drive and downloaded copies of the rest of the Hyperion data. She might need it later. She hated having it. 

She looked around her room, at the reclaimed yellow surfaces, and felt sickness coil in her gut. 

She couldn’t stay here. The buzz of alarm that had existed in the back of her head since her arrival became akin to an entire jar of agitated bees residing where her brain used to be. She curled her arms around her body and rocked back and forth in her chair.

Her fingers traced the scar on her chest. Raised, ugly. It hadn’t healed like most scars. There was a purple that lurked underneath the skin there. She’d thought it was bruising or scar tissue, but now she realized the hue was closer to eridium. 

Her fingers traced the scar on her chest. She remembered the pain that had laced through her torso when she woke up for what she thought was the first time after receiving the wound. It was easy to imagine that pain multiplied tenfold, a hundredfold. She had plenty of points of reference.

Her fingers traced the scar down her chest to where it abruptly stopped just at the bottom of her ribcage. An interruption. 

Her tablet chimed, and Angel had the sudden irrational thought that it was Garruson, coming for her at last. 

It took her five minutes or maybe five hours to regain her faculties of motion. She picked up the tablet.

_i’m coming back 2 helios 2morrow. got some cool computer parts. help me sort em?_

Angel cradled the tablet in her arms like a life preserver. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.


	11. Catch A Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel has had about enough of Helios. If only there were some sort of chariot to take her away from that place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whats UP kids! you may have noticed its been a while since a new chapter. that's cuz cha girl got pneumonia. and i've been delirious for weeks. I did this chapter instead of my astronomical pile of make up work so like. crone app the feet my funky fresh comrades

The dusty wind ruffled her headscarf as Angel looked out across the plain turned gold in the sunlight. Despite Helios’s rapid rate of expansion, all the new buildings stayed clear of the Vault archway, which towered as a looming menace, as if ticking down a doomsday clock. If she squinted, Angel could make out some rubble at the base of the archway. Vaughn had told her about it—the remains of shrines some of the Eyes had tried to build. 

As Angel tilted her head to make out the rubble, the apparitions appeared again. A blur of glinting blue-purple light that warped and shifted into two figures walking. 

Angel rubbed her eyes, but they were still there. Even smacking the side of her head did no good, but it did give her a substantial throbbing headache. 

“Fuck,” Angel muttered. 

She rummaged through her storage deck and pulled out a chipped spyglass, which she trained on the base of the Vault archway. She couldn’t make out any details, just vaguely humanoid forms involved in some sort of animated conversation—and then they were gone again. 

Angel frowned. Maybe she really was hallucinating. She was supposed to tell Sasha about that. 

As if summoned by her thoughts, a vague cloud of dust appeared at the edge of the dusty plain. Sasha’s caravan quickly came into view in front of it, going at a speed that was perhaps a bit unsafe. Angel jumped off the crate of wrenches she was sitting on and waved. Sasha honked the horn twice and slid to a halt in front of the Eye of Helios. 

“How’s it going?” she asked as she hopped out of the caravan. 

“Fine,” Angel replied. “What’d you find?” 

“Turns out one of the main Helios R&D computer centers fell super far away from the main wreckage.” Sasha patted the side of the van. “Not much of it was salvageable, but what was looks interesting.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“Okay, but first,” Sasha spread her arms wide, “you gotta tell me everything! How was your first week here? How did you and Vaughn get along?” She pranced over to a discarded wooden pallet and gestured for Angel to sit beside her. “It’s been ages since I’ve had some good gossip.”

“Well,” Angel fumbled, “Vaughn got me a room and I helped out at the garage for a bit, and, um…” 

“I don’t mean that!” Sasha flopped backwards onto the pallet. “I mean, how are you doing? Did you make friends?”

“I’m…doing okay.” Her hands trembled. She had to stop her fingers from creeping to her collarbone. “Vaughn is a lot nicer than I expected. Almost too nice.” 

“That’s Vaughn for ya,” Sasha chuckled. “Can’t help being suspicious of him sometimes. Guess that’s what happens when you grow up off-planet.”

Angel bit her lip. “I’m living in the attic of this couple, Hester and Oleta Samuels. This place is almost unnerving. No one’s tried to kill me yet.” She’d watched her death and her resurrection, but she didn’t know how to tell Sasha that. “Which is weird, because it’s Hyperion.”

“That’s why I don’t stay here,” Sasha confessed. “As much as I’d like to live somewhere nice, there’s no way I’m staying in a place with yellow walls.”

“I figured it was because you liked the life on the road.”

“God, no,” Sasha chuckled. “I’d love to settle down, get a job that didn’t involve me almost dying…but I value my freedom more, and Hyperion makes me nervous.”

Angel thought of the cold yellow walls of the autopsy room. For all she knew, that video was taken on Helios. She lay down on the pallet next to Sasha.

“You’re leaving again after you drop off these parts, aren’t you?”

“Yup.”

Angel’s finger and thumb rubbed against each other.

“Can…um…”

“Yeah?”  
“Can I come with you?”

Sasha looked taken aback. 

“What?”

Angel’s fingernails dug into her palms.

“I mean, it’s totally okay if you don’t have room. Just thought I’d ask. I—I can be helpful! I’ll drive, and I know some things about cars and computers…you’ll barely even know I’m there. Like an assistant.”

“What? No, that’s not what—it just surprised me, is all. I thought you’d rather stay here where it’s safe and there are, y’know, people, instead of going on the road with me. I don’t—it’s not a good life to offer.”

“I thought I could stay here,” Angel said quietly, “but it’s more Hyperion than I expected. I felt so much safer with you. And…happier.”

Sasha wiped a hand over her face, probably to protect it from the sun that was rapidly raising redness on her cheeks.

“Well,” she said, “it would be nice to have another driver. If I have to spend one more waking day staring at the road with no one to talk to I’m gonna lose it.” She held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, I guess.”

Angel stared at the hand just long enough for it to be awkward before giving it a quick shake. Sasha’s hand was warm and slightly damp with sweat. The information shock was almost too much.

With a little “hup!” Sasha swung her arms and sat up. 

“C’mon, first mate Feathers. I got a bunch of circuit boards and I have no idea what the fuck to make of ‘em.”

“Circuit boards?” Angel muttered, following her to the caravan. “You’re better off selling those to collectors than trying to make use of them.”

The inside of the caravan was filled with taped-together cardboard boxes all stamped with the Hyperion logo. Sasha had scribbled notes on each one, although they didn’t look very helpful—“cyber shit” and “wires” didn’t exactly let Angel know the form or function of the technology within. 

“I found this cool thing,” Sasha announced, pulling something that looked vaguely like an ECHO tablet out of the glovebox. “Dunno what it is.” She handed it to Angel.

Angel’s eyes widened as she inspected the device. She scraped a fingernail along the Hyperion logo, revealing the red paint underneath.

“Sasha, this is super rare! It’s old Atlas tech—an ammo digistructor.”

Sasha perked up.

“Wait, unlimited ammo?”

“Um, not quite. It’ll only give you one magazine per solar charge. But it’s about the farthest Atlas ever got with their Eridian tech. You can get quite a bit for it.”

“Hell no! I’m keeping that.” 

Sasha was fascinated with the digistructor. Her eyes sparkled as soon as Angel mentioned ammo digistruction. There was a sort of warmth that appeared in Angel’s chest as soon as she realized how happy she’d made Sasha. 

She was useful, that was all. That was why Sasha was happy.

Sasha pulled a clipboard from where it lay discarded under the bed. 

“Let’s get started,” she announced.

———

“You guys in here?”

Angel looked up from the wires she was sorting as Vaughn opened the door to the caravan. He caught himself on the lintel as he almost tripped on a box of converters Sasha had put haphazardly near the stairs. With his other hand, he held up a platter laden with glasses and a plate of scones. 

“I brought lemonade,” he offered. “Citrus crop just came in. And Era made scones, since you brought her that elemental barrel last month.”

“Era’s scones?” Sasha picked her way over to Vaughn and snatched a pair of pastries. “Don’t mind if I do. Hey Angel!”

Angel put her hands up just as Sasha tossed a scone at her. It was still warm, but plain—Angel couldn’t remember the last time she saw uncontaminated bulk sugar for sale.

“I made the lemonade,” Vaughn said proudly as Sasha handed Angel a glass. “Still working on the recipe. Sugar’s scarce—our beet crop isn’t coming in so great. I’m thinking we need more fertilizer. Does that sound right? I’m not a farmer.”

Angel alternated sips of lemonade with bites of scone. The scone melted in her mouth—it wasn’t too sweet, which was nice. The best part was that it was so obviously made without use of Hyperion’s chemical synthesis kitchens. This new mode of eating had its perks, she thought. No more nutritional sludge that she couldn’t even taste. No more blood in her mouth.

The lemonade was weak, but it was cold, and it had been made with care by someone thoughtful. 

It was a new flavor.

“This is a weird drink,” Sasha commented. “It’s like…orange flavor but worse on the mouth.”

“Uh, yeah? It’s lemonade? Have you guys never had lemonade?”

“I had it,” Angel input, “when I was little. Don’t really remember it.”

“Is that what those weird yellow fruits were for?” Sasha asked. 

“Uh, yeah,” Vaughn told her. “They’re lemons. Y’know, when life gives you lemons…”

“That’s what that phrase means?” Sasha demanded. “I thought lemon was a gun manufacturer for the longest time.” She examined the drink. “This is good, though. I thought you were just growing them for the color.”

“Thanks, Vaughn,” Angel told him quietly. Politely. “Snacks make the work better.”

“You got anything good for me?” Vaughn asked.

“Buncha wires,” Sasha input.

“Lots of regulators and data storage,” Angel added. “Plus some agricultural equipment. I set those aside in that box.”

“Jackpot!” Vaughn laughed. “Man, Marie’s been on my ass about getting irrigation control for months!” He began rifling through the box that Angel had marked “Farming” in clear black letters. “How much for all this? Plus the other useful stuff.”

“I’ll knock the price down to 1,000 credits if you get Era to make us some scones for the road,” Sasha told him.

Angel caught herself brainstorming techniques to negotiate the price higher. Make the agriculture equipment seem more essential. Remind him he couldn’t get it anywhere else. Play a pity card.

Threaten violence, of course. That was always where negotiations ended up, and she knew exactly how to sell it. She’d had quite the teacher.

1,000 credits was plenty. It was fine. They didn’t need to negotiate.

Sasha and Vaughn were talking now. Angel pulled herself back to reality.

“…in a few hours,” Sasha said, “but we can change that to stay a little while. For the scones.”

“We?”

Angel could see the script laid out in front of her, and it offered stage directions she didn’t care to read.

Sasha waited a moment, waiting for Angel to deliver her lines, before replying, “Yeah, Angel’s coming with me. It’ll be nice to have company on the road.”

“Oh.” Vaughn’s face formed the signature expression of disappointment. Angel tried to make herself smaller, acting as if she was completely engrossed in sorting the wires. “Well…I’ll miss ya, Angel. Can I send you with some drink for the road?”

Angel had the wrong script, apparently.

“Um,” she replied, “as long as it’s lemonade. Keep the whiskey.”

“Fair enough,” Vaughn chuckled. “I’m gonna go tell Era you want more scones.” He backed away slowly, seemingly unwilling to exit the conversation.

“Hell yeah,” cheered Sasha. 

Angel stood up and surveyed their work. The components had been sorted into neat boxes based on purpose, with two boxes dedicated to scrap. Sasha held a clipboard with an inventory of all the things she’d collected. It had taken them the better part of a solar day, but their work was finished.

“I think we’re done,” Angel announced.

“Cool!” Vaughn yelled. “I’ll tell Nina and Yvette.” 

“Bye for now, Vaughn!” Sasha yelled back.

“Right, right. I’ll just…turn around and leave. Cool.”

Sasha turned to Angel.

“It’ll take a bit for him to get everything sorted. Wanna play some Revolver’s Gambit?”

“I’m not good with guns…”

“It’s a card game.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Gameplay for no purpose was illogical and useless. Angel thought it sounded excellent.

“Just—um, I gotta go get my stuff,” Angel continued, “if we’re heading out soon.”

————

Vaughn returned an hour later with two women in tow. One wore cracked yellow glasses and an expression of perpetual annoyance. The other sported impressive muscles and looked the crates over with a dispassionate eye that suggested she recognized all the technology. 

Angel put down her hand—it was quite a good one—and retreated towards the corner of the caravan. This exchange was none of her business.

“How’d your game go?” Vaughn asked as the buff woman started to remove the boxes from the caravan. 

“She cheats,” Angel and Sasha said in unison. They glared at each other for about half a second before Sasha started giggling. 

“It’s not funny,” Angel told her. “It’s—“

“You’re smiling,” Sasha sang.

Angel bit the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t even realized it. 

“It’s getting late,” Vaughn said. “Sure you don’t want to stay the night?”

Something subtle changed in Sasha’s demeanor. A sort of defensive stance, arms crossed against a nonexistent assault. 

“Helios has nothing that this caravan can’t do better.”

“Running water?” Vaughn suggested.

“Helios has almost nothing that this caravan can’t do better. We’re heading out.”

There was the disappointment again—or maybe it wasn’t disappointment, because it didn’t seem to come with anger and punishment, like disappointment always did.

“Well,” Vaughn said, “see you later, alligator.” He handed Angel a bag. “Your scones. And a few containers of lemonade.”

Sasha started the van.

“After a while, crocodile. Tell Era thanks for the scones.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Unreadable face, again. It made Angel nervous, how unreadable Sasha was. Like a puzzle she hadn’t cracked yet.

“I’m only driving up to Sanctuary II,” she reassured Vaughn. “Back soon.”

“Stay safe.”

Angel watched Vaughn wave goodbye through the back windshield as they drove north, away from Helios. Away from Hyperion. 

It occurred to Angel how strange it was that she’d spent a week at Hyperion and nothing bad had happened to her. Perhaps she herself had a guardian angel.


	12. The Other Side Of The Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora isn't an average planet. And the Vault of the Traveler wasn't an average vault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little glimpse of what Rhys and Fiona have been up to.....might change this later......

“We leave tomorrow.” Selene slammed her bags down on the table, and Fiona looked up with a start.

“Tomorrow?” She blinked.

“Ok, hold on,” Rhys said. “You said it would take at least two more months before—“

“Plans change,” Selene said curtly. 

“She’s right,” Ko added, packing the dried meat into a small satchel. “Something’s going to happen. Something that has nothing to do with the Core’s natural cycle. And we want to be there when it does.”

“How can you possibly know what’s going to happen?” Rhys demanded. He’d stopped his wisecracking over the past few weeks, which worried Fiona more than Selene’s dire predictions ever could.

Ko shrugged. “I don’t. But this energy is powerful. Powerful enough I can feel it from the other side. Like something’s awakening.” 

“Well, I say it’s about damn time,” Fiona declared. “I’m sick of sitting on my ass.”

“The journey will be hard,” Selene warned.

“Any idea what it is you’re feeling?” Rhys asked.

“An anomaly,” Ko replied. “Something that shouldn’t exist.” She placed a hand between his shoulder blades and guided him outside, sweeping a hand to gesture at the sky, where thousands of silver bodies, insects from this distance, milled in a complicated dance. “Look at how fast they’re moving. The Eridians feel it too.”

“And how do we know that this is a good thing for us? Cuz, y’know, I’ve had some experience with Eridian stuff, and it generally…isn’t a good thing for us.

“We can’t know. All we can do is hope.” She looked up at him with those unnerving silver eyes, two shining moons without a sun. “You still hope, don’t you, Rhys?”

Rhys rubbed a hand over his arm, long since tarnished from lack of proper care. His pinkie finger had stopped moving. 

“I don’t know.” His voice was soft, meant more for him than Ko. “I think…I have to. If only because I’ll go insane once this hope runs out.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha and Angel take a job from the Firehawk to clear out an abandoned Eridian cave—but Angel finds a little something more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys i am So Scared that sasha wont be in bl3 so im adding to this out of spite

Angel had spent a long time avoiding Sanctuary II, but her trip to Helios had left her full of reckless courage. She adjusted her mask to make sure it was secure as she and Sasha strolled up to Sanctuary II, which was a few buildings outside of a bunker set into a cliffside. The landscape was a tad depressing—all of the vegetation had been artificially cleared, for obvious reasons. Angel remembered watching Hector’s armies in horror over the ECHO, too weak to lift a finger to help. Yet another way she’d failed Sanctuary’s denizens. 

“You didn’t tell me why we’re here,” Angel said.

Sasha shrugged. 

“Lilith just said she had something for me and that she’d tell me in person. Normally I wouldn’t take that kind of job, but she’s been trustworthy. So far.” She grimaced. “In my experience, even the most trustworthy don’t stay that way for long.”

The comment pierced Angel’s heart, and she winced. Lilith had trusted her enough to charge into the jaws of death, guns blazing, and all she’d gotten was a ton of tentacles and a dead boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend. Somehow, the distinction didn’t make Angel feel better.

Lilith, Brick, Mordecai and Tina were sitting on a few crates by the city’s entrance, playing a game of Three-Card Reload. As they approached, Tina slapped down her hand and cheered loudly. Mordecai groaned and slammed his forehead into Brick’s shoulder. Lilith lit a cigarette. 

“Hey Lilith!” Sasha called. “Heard you had a job for me!”

Lilith looked up with a smile of recognition.

“‘Sup, hotshot?” she greeted. “C’mon over, let me brief you.” She nodded to Angel. “Who’s the bandit?”

Angel’s disguise had been good enough to fool Lilith. She switched on her voice modulator, just in case. 

“My name’s Selene,” Angel said. “I’m helping Sasha out with this one.”

Lilith narrowed her eyes.

“She’s on the level,” Sasha added. “I trust her. Well, about as much as you can trust anyone down here.”

Lilith nodded. Angel’s fingers curled into fists.

“I’ll keep it quick so you can over there before the heat hits. ‘Bout forty miles north of here are some Eridian ruins with a bunch of abandoned Dahl shit. I’ve been over there a few times, but, ah, the Catch-A-Ride’s on the fritz and…and no one knows how to fix it until Ellie gets back. It’s not like I can Phasewalk all the stuff back here. But it should all fit in your caravan.”

Angel suppressed a giggle at the mental image of Lilith sprinting through another dimension while staggering under the weight of a bunch of military crates.

“You got it,” Sasha replied. “Er, why not just tell me over the ECHO? Did you really need to call me over here?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” Lilith said. “Couple of nuts cultists are looking for Eridian ruins, and they’re real ECHO-savvy. Keep an eye out, okay, killer?”

Sasha gave her a thumbs up, seemingly unfazed by the mention of cultists.

Angel could probably fix the Catch-A-Ride, but she left without saying so. She didn’t want to spend one more second in a place where Lilith might recognize her and liquify her on the spot.

As the caravan trundled down the old road north, Angel couldn’t stop fidgeting. Her nervous energy traveled like electricity down her arms, and she had to hold back the tide of her power. She wasn’t just a hapless passenger anymore, and that somehow made her more nervous, because now the possibility of failure loomed overhead. She was going to help Sasha do her job. Which involved something Eridian. Unfortunately.

Angel had enough of Eridians. So of course the journey to the ruins seemed to flash by in an instant. One moment she was laughing with Sasha about some dumb ECHOnet show, and the next they were silent as they both passed a crumbling stack of pale grey stone shot with white veins. There wasn’t much left of the ruins from the outside, just an outline of purple metal outside of a cave.

“Ready to load up?” Sasha heaved open the rear swing door. “Let’s grab this stuff.” 

“Hopefully it’s safe stuff,” Angel sighed. 

Sasha flashed Angel a grin. “Sure you’re up for this? These crates might be pretty heavy.”

“I’ll do my best,” Angel sighed self-consciously. Her arms were not strong. “Sorry, I might not be very helpful.”

“I was just teasing.” Sasha looked a bit uncomfortable. Her arms were actually strong—the tank top she was wearing flaunted her impressive biceps.

The cave itself was barely a ruin, indistinguishable from a normal cave except for a flat wall covered in glowing sigils. DAHL crates lay discarded and dusty around the room, filled with weapons, tech, and raw Eridium ore. Sasha picked up a crate with a grunt and carried it out. Angel moved over to inspect the wall to make sure nothing sprung from it and attacked them. 

The seams of the wall glowed pink and blue, like in Eleseer. That was odd. Usually, Elpisian designs didn’t appear in Pandoran Eridian architecture. The angles of the lines were sharp and smooth. And the shape they were making…

“Hey Sasha?” Angel called. “I don’t think this is a wall.” 

She placed her left palm against the metal. It was warm despite the cold of the cave, and vibrated slightly. 

“What do you mean?” Sasha set down the second crate and leaned over Angel’s shoulder.

Too late, Angel realized she had no idea how to tell Sasha how she knew how to recognize the telltale signs of Eridian doors.

“Um.” She knocked on the wall, and sure enough it rang hollow. “That.”

“I’ll tell Lilith,” Sasha sighed. “Maybe she’ll want whatever bullshit’s on the other side, but I sure don’t.” She turned away to grab another crate. 

Angel stared at Sasha’s retreating back. Sasha was the first person on Pandora Angel had ever seen who would walk away from a potential Eridian goldmine without trying to exploit it. Everyone on Pandora clutched ancient moneymakers until they’d beaten them for every cent, whether the moneymaker was a Vault key, a gun, or a Siren. 

Not Sasha, apparently. 

Well, Angel was interested. Not for money or power, though. She wanted to know. 

Because the Eridians were the one thing that might have saved her.

She pressed her left hand against the door and closed her eyes. It took a few moments for her to focus enough, to quiet her mind to hear the hum for a moment. And then her fear crowded it out, and she was back in the bunker, and Jack handed her a key—

No. Focus.

Her left hand on the metal. The metal against her left hand, vibrating ever so slightly. She reached further, deep into the rock. It had to unlock somehow. The metal was cold, cold like blood, blood on her fingers as she fell to the road, lifted by the woman with the dark skin stark against her white shirt stark against her muscled arms—

Focus, Angel told herself, gritting her teeth. But the thought of Sasha certainly was more conducive to using her powers than the thought of Jack.

She remembered Sasha’s hands over her markings, and that calmed her breathing enough for her to reach into the door and unlock it. 

She exhaled and dropped her hand, and the door hissed open.

“You opened it!?”

Angel turned her head. Sasha was in the cave doorway, looking perturbed. 

“I like looking at Eridian tech,” she replied. “Maybe there’s something we can sell. You need a new transmission, right?”

Sasha crossed her arms and chewed her bottom lip.

“Not worth it,” she decided. “Angel, it’s Eridian! You never know what you’re gonna get with those damn aliens!”

So money wasn’t enough. Which meant that Angel was out of motivators, except emotional manipulation or the threat of violence, neither of which she wanted to use on Sasha.

“Why would you want to go in there?” Sasha continued. She gestured out of the cave—a gesture to Pandora as a whole. “I thought you weren’t like those assholes out there.”

“I’m not a Vault Hunter,” Angel insisted. “But…there’s a lot I don’t know about being a Siren, and no one else knows anything except the Eridians.”

Sasha’s expression softened a little. 

“You don’t have to come,” Angel added. “I’ll just take a quick peek and then be out to help you with the crates.”

“No way. You’re not going in there without me.” Sasha was the first across the threshhold. “C’mon. Be careful, or whatever. Let’s find the Eridian encyclopedia. Or. Whatever.”

“Thanks.” Angel’s voice came out as a squeak. 

It didn’t make any sense. Sasha hated and feared all things Eridian, and yet would step into an Eridian room—for what? For Angel? Not likely. Angel was worth protecting the way an investment portfolio was worth protecting—with your less valuable assets, not your life.

She lit up her hand and followed Sasha into the room.


	14. Uh Oh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel discovers some Eridian technology, with unforeseen effects

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im probably gonna delete chapter titles at some point because i dont like them

Sasha had very little experience with Eridians—well, more than the average Pandoran, but far more than Sasha herself would like. Anger and regret tainted the walls she walked through with Angel. 

Why had she suggested this? She didn’t have to do this. 

Sasha cast a wary eye on the smooth, cobalt walls lit by magenta lines. It was far different than the innards of the traveler or the crumpled temples that dotted every desert. It didn’t feel Pandoran—the hallway was clean, orderly. Beautiful, someone might call it. Someone who wasn’t Sasha.

Angel seemed equally unmoved by this architectural marvel; her gaze was clinical and detached. Then again, Angel was hard to read, so Sasha couldn’t tell what she was really thinking. It was frustrating, really—as a hustler, Sasha had gotten quite good at reading people, and yet the first time in a long time she’d found a book she wanted to read, it was firmly padlocked closed.

“This is creepy,” Sasha remarked. 

The hallway was seemingly endless and as silent as the grave. Sasha hadn’t appreciated how loud Pandora was until the sound was gone—no wind, no rakks, no hum of the sand. 

“I keep expecting something to jump out at us,” Angel said, her voice low. Not scared, no, she delivered that prediction like a scientist describing the reaction two chemicals would produce. 

On one hand, Sasha was glad Angel wasn’t scared. On the other, Sasha hated being the weak one. 

Finally, the hallway took a sharp corner and opened onto a small room. Both of them paused in the doorway. Sasha was wary. Angel just looked like she was taking it all in.

In the center of the room was a floating ring of blue crystal. At chest level around the room were a circle of flat tables of metal, inscribed with magenta lines and topped with more blue crystal. The whole room glowed with ethereal purple light that cast Angel’s face in a halo-like glow. 

She was the prettiest thing in the room. Which didn’t mean much, Sasha thought, since nothing else in the room was particularly pretty.

“These crystals worth anything?” Sasha asked.

“Yup. Billions. And they’re exactly the kind of thing that make people like you not want anything to do with Eridians, so…don’t touch.”

Sasha crossed her hands behind her back. “So can we leave?”

“Hang on.” Angel stepped up to one of the crystals. “The Eridians used these for information storage. Like computers. I’m good with computers.” She flexed her fingers. “Let me see what I can find.”

She placed her palms on the crystal. Sasha flinched. Angel hummed thoughtfully.

“What’s the word?” Sasha asked tentatively.

“This place shouldn’t be turned on. Something happened,” Angel. “Something activated this subsystem. It appears to be some sort of precursor to fast travel, but I can’t quite figure out—“

The blue ring sparked with electricity. And just like that, Angel was gone. 

Gone. Disappeared. Into thin air. She left no evidence of herself behind.

Sasha blinked, then rubbed her eyes, then looked around wildly. Angel wasn’t there. She touched the Eridian crystal, and then she wasn’t there.

They’d taken her.

Sasha choked on the suffocating air. She felt something cold on her palms and realized it was blood drawn from pressing her fingernails into her skin.

“Angel?” Sasha whispered, her voice husky. Breaking the silence broke something in her heart, and she rushed forward, slamming her hands on the crystal Angel had touched. Blood stained the blue gem. 

“Angel!” Sasha cried. “Angel, please tell me you’re invisible! Can you hear me!”

She punched the crystal and looked around wildly. The blue crystal ring hummed placidly, seemingly unchanged. Sasha bared her teeth at it. It was taunting her, smiling at her, whispering to her.

How many do you have left? it seemed to ask. How many more do you have for me to take?

“Fuck you!” Sasha meant to scream, but it came out as a wheeze. She couldn’t breathe, she could barely see, all she could see was Angel. 

Fiona and Rhys being gone was fine. It was fine. They hadn’t been taken. They’d left. But Angel hadn’t meant to go. She hadn’t meant to leave Sasha, she’d been right in midsentence.

She thought of Angel, afraid, wherever the Eridians took their hostages. Heart thumping. Hands shaking. Tears salt against her cheeks—no, that wasn’t the imagined Angel, that was Sasha. 

She strode past the metal “computers,” heedless of Angel’s warning.

“I’ll fucking destroy you,” she choked out at the blue ring. It didn’t respond. Just spun slowly in midair. Sasha pulled a gun out and fired, one, two, three. She didn’t know what kind of gun it was, just the sound it made. Ricocheting past her ears in time with the heartbeat in her fingertips. 

The ring didn’t respond.

Sasha screamed and punched the ring, then punched it again, and with every punch she saw the face of her sister. Her knuckles split and she saw Rhys. She bit her lip until she tasted blood and saw Angel and her distant eyes. Angel, whose thousand-mile gaze spoke of long-ago pain related to the beautiful winding roads along her arm. She tried her best to destroy the ring but all she did was broke herself like a wave against an unyielding shore. 

Sasha fell to her knees, exhausted. The blue ring didn’t even show a stain of her blood. Because, of course, nothing she could do would ever matter to it. To them.

She rubbed her eyes. Okay. Okay. She’d overreacted. This was fine. Lilith would know what to do. Lilith dealt with Eridian bullshit in her sleep. Yeah, okay, she hadn’t been able to do anything about the Vault of the Traveller, but maybe this was different. 

She could forgo the payment on the crates, make it another month on meager savings. Maybe she could find another job. Vaughn would have something, right? It would be fine. As long as Lilith could bring Angel back. 

_And what if she can’t?_ asked a sinister little voice at the back of her head. A voice that sounded an awful lot like Felix. _Are you going to finally listen to reason and avoid attachments, or are you going to find someone else to drive away or bring down with you?_

“Shut up,” Sasha demanded through gritted teeth at the crystal ring. “Just shut up!”

She shakily got to her feet. 

“Just call Lilith, get her over here,” she muttered. “Maybe get Tannis. Maybe they’ll be happy with the discovery. Yeah, they probably deal with this shit every day.”

The thought comforted her. The Crimson Raiders dealt with Vaults on the regular. This was probably nothing. Sure, they hadn’t been able to find Rhys and Fiona, but it was probably a lot harder to find people who didn’t want to be found and had already been gone for months by the time they’d tried.

The little hairs around her temple stood on end, and Sasha looked up with a gasp as the blue ring shone with an inner light. 

“Oh. Well, that’s…interesting.”

Sasha didn’t say that. 

She whirled around, holding her breath. There was Angel, staring down at the blue crystal table with a frown as if she’d never disappeared.

Maybe she had never disappeared, and had just watched Sasha have an absolute breakdown over nothing. Maybe Sasha was finally going crazy. Everyone on Pandora did it eventually.

“Where the hell did you go?” Sasha demanded. “Holy shit, Angel!”

“Uh.” Angel stared at Sasha with wide eyes. “I’m not quite sure, but there were Eridians there?”

“That scared the shit out of me!” Sasha gestured wildly as she strode up to Angel, who took a step back. “WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!”

“I didn’t mean to!” 

Angel’s eyes were wide and scared—not by the disappearance, no, Angel had been calm when she reappeared. Sasha realized with horror that it was _her_ that Angel was scared of.

“I’m not mad at you, I just—I—“ Sasha took a deep, shuddering breath. “I thought I’d lost you.” 

She sniffled in a most undignified manner. _Dammit, Sasha,_ she chided herself, _pull yourself together. You haven’t even known this woman for a month._

Angel’s uneasy eyes flickered down to Sasha’s hands and settled there, her brows drawn together in concern. 

“Sasha, what happened to your hands?”

Sasha looked down and saw that her knuckles were split and bloodied. She hadn’t even noticed. 

“I heroically attacked the crystal to try to save you,” she declared. 

“You’re crying,” Angel noted. 

“I—okay, I kind of freaked out, and I didn’t know what to do, so I punched it. I punched it a lot. I also shot it a little. I don’t really know how else to solve problems with crystals, okay?”

Angel stepped forward, no longer looking frightened. She took Sasha’s hands and studied her broken and battered skin. 

“You punched a crystal to try to get me back?” Her voice was low and disbelieving.

“I didn’t know what happened. I thought…I thought…” Sasha bit her lip and tried not to cry. God, it was frustrating. The old Sasha, the Sasha that prowled Hollow Point, never would have cried over a friend disappearing for two freaking minutes. She was a badass. She was cold and detached, able to spin a web and catch her prey and cut the cord without looking back.

Sasha collapsed into Angel’s arms, pressing her face into the crook of Angel’s neck. She smelled clean linen—how the hell was Angel so clean?—and felt warm skin against her cheek. Angel was real, and she was there, and that was more than Sasha could say for anyone else who had ever pretended to care about her. 

“Hey,” Angel said softly. “I’m here.”

She hesitantly wrapped her arms around Sasha, and one of her arms felt oddly warm and electric. The split skin on Sasha’s knuckles began to itch like a healing scab. 

“Tell me next time you teleport, okay?” Sasha muttered. “You gave me a heart attack.”

She pulled away from Angel and wiped her eyes with her hands. Her hands. Which did not hurt from the saltwater in her tears.

Sasha stared at her knuckles. The blood was still there, but the wounds were scabbed over and almost healed. 

“What?” she asked out loud. 

“Oh, uh, that happens sometimes.”

“What do you mean? Like, that happens in Eridian places? Because no one healed me when I almost died inside a Vault monster!”

“No, I mean I can sometimes heal—wait, what?”

Sasha handwaved the question away. “Not important. Where did you go? How did you get back?” She laughed breathlessly, humorlessly. “I feel like I’m never gonna run out of questions.”

Angel shrugged. “I was here, and then I was somewhere else. The sky was this dark purple, and there were Eridians flying around. Hundreds of them. It was like a dream, almost—I just had to use my powers to pull myself back. It was easy. I was never in any danger, Sasha.”

It was that easy to get back from an Eridian dimension. 

“I’m glad you’re not dead or disappeared or whatever,” Sasha said. “C’mon. Let’s lock this up and get our money.”

“Sure you don’t want to tell Lilith about this?”

“Yup. I hate this place and I want it to stay buried.”

To Sasha’s surprise, Angel nodded and said, “I agree. I don’t know what this is, but it’s dangerous.”

“You can say that again. Nearly made me have to finish carrying the crates myself.”

Angel laughed. It was a small laugh, but it made Sasha feel like she’d won a trophy. At least sixth place. 

They locked the room up securely, and Sasha decided that she would leave those two minutes of internal chaos behind. There was no need to deal with that. Angel was back, after all.


End file.
